Motion sickness

[UncleMao]

Never listen to the sales guy.

I was going to put money down to preorder Gears of War for the 360 when the guy talks me into getting Splinter Cell instead.

I figure... what the heck. Considering I've never played any of the previous Splinter Cell games (Except a crappy mobile game I had when I bought my Nokia - hardly counts as a Splinter Cell game anyway)

Which gets me to the topic at hand... motion sickness.

Ever since the days of Doom 2 I have had the distinct displeasure of loving shooting games but never being able to play one for more than 20 -25 minutes before I get the urge to throw up everything. Any game involving walking through corridors and being able to pan and tilt your vision through a controller has made me feel the same kind of sick.

Prey, Doom, Quake, you name it, I've had to suffer through it. To the extent I usually stay away from such games. Ending up playing RPGs and shit.

Question is, am I the only one who gets this sick or do you fellas have any particular remedies which might aid me in my quest to blow a few hundred things into smithereens without having to upchuck my spleen every 1/2 hr?

[exelis]

Shooters got old for me after Quake (the first one). I didn't even play that too much.

I'm much more into using my brains when playing a game, be it for imagination or puzzles or strategy.

[efilflah]

I used to have the same symptoms (not often though), but they seemed disappear ages ago, and I can't really pinpoint when or why it went away.

I know that having two displays running at different refresh rates within your field of vision can cause motion sickness (i.e. 1 TV at 60hz and 1 monitor at 85hz).

I also know that with V-Sync off major differences in frame rates can cause motion sickness (not to mention tearing). (e.g. an older game like quake3 running at well over 150fps with vsync off, suddenly for whatever reason drops to below 60 and then goes back up again).

The most recent case I remember actually now that I think about it, is in half life 2 when you're riding around in the boat or the buggy. A lot of people were complaining about that, because the FOV changes when you get in a vehicle. That's a big one, the farther away from a human eye's natural field of view, the more likely motion sickness will kick in. It was easily solved in HL2 because you can drop the console down and set the FOV manually or just add it into your autoexec.cfg. Either way, I think that there must be a way for you to alleviate the symptoms or at least give you more playing time.

Other than that I don't know. I feel like I'm not remembering a big one, the one that probably helped me the most, but I can't figure out what it could be.

[Hortnon]

I'm lucky, I guess...FPS's don't effect me at all, as far as motion sickness is concerned. Neither does reading in a bouncy car or any of that kind of stuff...

[doppletwo]

I don't have a problem playing any game myself.



But I get a little sick watching others play sometimes.



Usually first-person-shooters aren't that bad.



The worst for me is watching someone else play a fast paced flying game that has free roaming 3D space.



I almost tossed my cookies while watching a friend play Star Wars: Rogue Leader (its the sequel to Rogue Squadron on thr N64) on the Gamecube.